How to Attract Top Developer Talent: 7 Proven Strategies

Everyone wants top talent.

But top talent only wants to go to the top employers.

If you’re, say, Google or Apple, then good for you – top talent will flock to you without you needing to actively do much to attract them.

But what if you’re not? What if you’re merely SAP? Or Atlassian? Or Leo’s Discount Software?

How do you attract top talent?

It’s something you should think about.

74% of employers struggle to find the skilled talent they need.1

And it’s not a selection problem – it’s an attraction problem. The main challenges companies face when struggling to recruit are a low number of applicants (60%) and competition from other employers (55%).2

But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do about it.

This article will give you proven strategies for attracting and hiring the best developers for your team.

Table of Contents

• Why Is Attraction Important?
• Why Is It So Hard to Hire Top Developers?
• Key Strategies to Attract Top Developer Talent 
• A Little Off The Top 

Why Is Attraction Important?

“Who needs attraction? We source candidates proactively with outreach.”

I get it. “Attracting” top engineering talent sounds passive. Like a flower luring a bee.

But let’s say you’ve got a recruitment team that actively approaches prospective candidates.

“Hi, there’s an opportunity at our company you could be great for.”

The candidate says,

“So? Why should I care?”

If your recruiter doesn’t have anything attractive to say about the role or your company, you lose the candidate.

Talent attraction isn’t just a means of garnering applications. It’s all the reasons someone might want to work for you.

And, in the form of employer branding, messaging, and other candidate-facing signals, it has a significant impact on both applicant quantity and quality.3

Why Is It So Hard to Hire Top Developers?

But why should it be so hard? We saw earlier that companies are struggling. 

They want a job. We have a job. Ipso facto…

But it’s not that simple:

• High demand, low supply
  There are about 27 million developers worldwide.4 Seems like plenty. But if you want someone local, obviously that brings the figure right down (though hiring remote developers can combat this).
  Only a fraction will have the right experience in the languages that you need. That reduces it.
  Then, say you only want the best 10% of developers. Shrinks it further.
  Of those, only about a quarter will be actively looking for a new job. The number’s getting smaller.
  And of what’s left, every competitor will be just as keen as you are to speak to them.
  All of a sudden, top developers aren’t so ubiquitous.

• Competitive salary expectations

How do you decide what you’ll pay a developer?
You might look online for average developer salaries, so you have a benchmark.
But with top developers, this might not be enough.

The stats we looked at are broad, but even at the same level of seniority, devs with highly specialised skills (especially in AI) tend to earn 21% more than the average.5

If you’re advertising a developer role at the average salary, you might never see an application from a top dev. Even salaries that are slightly above average aren’t always competitive enough for them to apply.

• Non-monetary expectations

Beyond salary, top developers tend to be more discerning regarding employee benefits, perks, and work environment.
Companies without flexible working, professional development, and a positive company culture – or those who don’t make it clear that they have those things – will struggle to hire top developers.

Key Strategies to Attract Top Developer Talent 

So, we know what the problems are when hiring the best talent.

How do we solve them? How do you attract talented developers?

First, ask yourself another question:

“What makes a company appealing to top talent?” 

Then, be that. And make sure everyone knows it.

Simple, right? 

Kind of.

How do you do it, exactly?

Well, the exact methods you use to attract developers will vary depending on what you have to offer, but the following steps should put you in good stead.

Build a Strong Employer Brand

We mentioned Google and Apple earlier. They barely have to try to attract candidates because their employer brand does it for them.

Developers already know about them, but they might not know about you. How do startups attract top tech talent, for example?

Maybe they’ll research you. What will they find?

No doubt there’s information about how great or successful you are, and what you can do for your customers/clients. That’s just marketing. And sure, maybe potential applicants are impressed by your success, but every company talks about that.

Is there any information about what it’s like to actually work for you? Whatever’s good about your workplace culture, showcase it online.

Most companies have a careers page. Does yours speak about why someone might want to work for you? Does it give readers a reason to be interested, to care, from their own perspective? A “what’s-in-it-for-them”?

Keep it up-to-date and active. Feature (genuine) employee testimonials and stories.

Try to imagine what’d convince you to join. Then show it.

Offer Competitive Salaries and Benefits

This is a no-brainer, but it’s easier said than done.

Top developers know their worth and won’t settle for below-market (or even average) pay.

If you’re not sure what that is, there are salary benchmarking tools like reports, surveys, and calculators that can help you figure out what you should be paying. Of course, they won’t know exactly the ins and outs of what you’re looking for and how that could affect remuneration. If you need more personalised insight, run it by us – we have a decent idea of what’s likely to represent generosity.

If you can’t really afford to pay an attractive rate, you’ll need to make up the shortfall elsewhere. Everything else better be very tight. Don’t hide the salary – that breeds mistrust – but forefront the positives, whether that’s development, flexibility, benefits, or something unique to your business.

Create a Developer-Friendly Hiring Process

Imagine you’re a top developer. You’ll probably have lots of opportunities open to you.

Are you going to jump through hoops applying for a new role? Spend ages filling out forms? Or would you only bother if the process were simple?

Most likely the latter, right? So make the application process as quick and easy as possible.

That means avoiding things like having candidates input information that’s available in their résumé. Keeping the application process under 5 minutes, if possible. Review CVs promptly and come back quickly with a decision. 

It also means a rapid, smooth assessment process. Of course, it can be tough to determine if a developer is top-class. But you also need to attract them to the role.

So it’s crucial you balance two key things in the interview (we’ve added some links with more info to help you).

• Ensure the applicant’s high quality by: 
• evaluating hard skills with technical questions like these
• measuring soft skills
• Sell the opportunity by explaining why you can give them what they want 

Avoid multiple rounds of interviews. Use quicker skills-based assessments. Let applicants know the results ASAP. There's more information on reducing your time to hire here.

Provide Meaningful Work and Career Growth

There’s more to job satisfaction than just money. People are interested in interesting projects. They care about their own development.

So, if that’s not something you can offer, fix it. You can’t necessarily “invent” fun projects, but you can ensure new hires get involved in the more unique work you do.

Invest in skills training and other CPD. Ensure there are clear progression routes through your company.

Then, once those things are in place, talk about them. Especially in the job advert, but make them known – market them. 

Highlight your fun and impactful work, and mention – specifically – what you offer that’ll help your employees be better at what they do. Outline what their career trajectory could look like, how long it might take, and stories of others who’ve progressed.

Engage With Developer Communities

The best hires aren’t necessarily going to see your job ad on a recruitment platform, no matter how good it is. Chances are, they’re not actively looking.

This means you have to go where they are. Places like developer communities. That could mean tech meetups like Web Summit in Lisbon or FOSDEM in Brussels. You could attend Hackathons like Junction in Helsinki or HackZurich. Maybe you get involved in open-source communities like Debian or Kubernetes.

What you contribute to each of these communities depends on your resources – providing expert speakers might be too much for some, but you could offer mentoring or other support as a means of promoting your employer brand.

Encourage Employee Referrals

In marketing, positive word-of-mouth is tough to beat. It’s the same with your employer brand.

Your current employees likely know top developers. Maybe they’ve worked or studied with them, or are connected to them on social media.

And – assuming you’ve kept your team happy – they can promote the idea of working for you. With the message coming from a trusted source, like a peer, it’ll be a lot more effective.

You can bolster and encourage these comms by offering some form of referral reward scheme.

And it works both ways – it’s easier to validate a top candidate if they come recommended. It’s why as many as 40% of referred applicants get interviewed, as opposed to only 3% of inbound applicants, and around 10% get hired, compared to only around 0.3% inbound.6 

Foster a Developer-Friendly Work Culture

We mentioned keeping employees happy in the last point. There’s no point hiring a top developer if they’re going to hate it as soon as they join. Won’t be long until they’re back on the market.

For example, 80% of developers would prefer to upskill where they are now, rather than move to a new job to do it.7 Are you offering them that opportunity?

Are you supporting their well-being? Considering their mental health? Aligning with their values? These are all important to developers. 

You can achieve them by offering flexible working (location and hours), being transparent about salary and progression, and avoiding micromanagement. Speak to your team. Find out what they want, what matters to them, and implement it.

A Little Off The Top

No-one said it’d be easy attracting the best developers.

A good goal is to try to attract the best developers for you. 

But, importantly, by improving your employer brand and your offering, making your company as attractive as it can be to software engineers, you can enhance the calibre of what “the best for you” actually represents.

Yes, that can take time. The best hiring practices for tech talent usually do. Building a brand and seeing the rewards is a long process.

Still, a third party, like Remote Crew, can fast-track a significant proportion of it. With a talent pool of thousands of pre-vetted candidates, they already know who the top developers are. They can approach them with your tailored attraction message. Takes a big chunk of the effort off your plate.

Get in touch if having the bulk of the work done for you sounds appealing.